Between The Bookends

Copy provided by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

This is going to be one of those "it's me, not the book" type of reviews. This was a GOOD book. The writing was fabulous. The inner workings of the prison and the medical information was very realistically portrayed. Not that surprising because the author herself worked as a doctor in the prison system. That's really the gold in this book. Unfortunately the "romance" aspect left me bored.

To say this is a slow burn would be an understatement. There isn't a single sex scene in the whole book, and honestly maybe one or two kissing scenes. Because of that I just never really felt the connection between Maxim and Emma. They work together and rub each other the wrong way, but passion, love? Nope, wasn't feeling it.

Emma came off at times as ridiculously naive and immature. Maxim came off as a cold hearted judgy asshole for basically the whole book. In fact our first introduction to him, is him beating the crap out of an inmate. He repeats often throughout the book how inmates are trash and not redeemable and refuses to ever even consider another perspective. The way he reacts to something near the end which ultimately causes something terrible to happen to Emma was just the final straw.

Ultimately I just didn't buy into their HEA. I'm giving this one 3 stars because the writing was very good (I think this is the author's first book) and the storyline involving the prison workings and the little mystery kept me plugging along.